21 November 2016 6:00 PM

Another 'report'on drug decriminalisation has come out. You'll know about this by now. Sigh.

Several years ago I wrote a rather exhaustive book about the history of drug laws in this country since the 1960s, ‘The War We Never Fought’. This was the fruit of some years of careful research and was published by a reputable major publisher, Bloomsbury. It is still in print and available in other formats. https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-We-Never-Fought/dp/1441173315

This book also examined many of the arguments common on this subject. I made my own opinion clear, that the relaxation of laws against mind-altering drugs was a serious mistake.

While I am not a major celebrity, my name is not entirely unknown, my publisher is far from obscure, I had the services of one of the best publicists in the business, the subject is far from uninteresting or dull or non-topical indeed, barely a week passes without it being discussed , as I shall mention below. The book also had a beautifully-designed, clever and striking cover and was printed and produced to a very high standard. Had it ever been prominently displayed in bookshops, as more favoured books are according to the mysterious rules of the trade, it would have attracted attention.

To this day, there has been (outside my own newspaper) no fair or even approximately accurate summary of this book’s contents in any major British publication, though it contains some research pretty much unavailable elsewhere, and certainly not widely published elsewhere, which contradicts generally-held opinions on the state of affairs here. It has not been fairly or properly covered or reviewed by any major British publication. I was asked on to no BBC programme to discuss it.

That was it. Nobody else reviewed it at all. Years of work and an important argument, pretty much gone to waste. People in the publishing industry joked that it was ‘The Book They Never Bought’, and indeed it is the only one of my books that never went into a paperback edition(though paperback versions can now be obtained on demand).

The ‘report’ (which I have quickly skimmed, intending to read it thoroughly tonight) is in fact a reasonably competent and quite interesting propaganda pamphlet, containing the same arguments repeatedly advanced by legalisers with glancing mentions of (and confident dismissals of) medical worries about cannabis , the usual ‘what about tobacco and alcohol?’ stuff, Portugal, Uruguay, etc etc, and the usual crude and misleading use of the word. ‘prohibition’. It slightly acknowledges, but does not properly describe the arguments against its position, as a ‘report’, in my view, would do.

As usual in such documents, it fails to distinguish between the formal existence of a law and penalties, and their actual enforcement. Comically, it attributes the decline of enforcement to a failure of deterrence (p.28) as if recent highly-publicised abandonments of enforcement (as in Durham) were new developments rather than confirmation of a trend many decades old.

Oddly, it does later acknowledge ‘de facto decriminalisation’ , but fails to grasp its importance or to understand how long it has been going on.

In saying that more than 1,000 people in prison for cannabis offences (‘The incarceration of more than 1,000 people is a blight on not only the lives of those in jail but on the lives of their families too’. P.7), it contrives (page 30) to suggest (without actually saying) that they are there for possession :

‘Every year, 10-15% of all indictable offences brought before the courts are for drug possession. According to the latest figures available, there are 1,363 offenders in prison for cannabis-related offences in England and Wales’

Prior to June 2015, information held centrally on prisoners serving sentences for drug related offences was not sufficiently detailed to identify offences relating to cannabis as opposed to other drugs. Providing data back to 2010 could therefore only be done at disproportionate cost.

According to centrally held data, as at 30 June 2015 (latest available), there were 1,363 offenders in prison custody for cannabis related offences in England and Wales. This number includes all offenders who have had their offence categorised as a ‘drug offence’ and in which cannabis is explicitly stated in their offence description. This number does not include instances where cannabis may have been a contributing factor to the main offence committed.

These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.’

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This of course does *not* mean that they are in prison for simple first-offence cannabis possession. I doubt anyone is. We can only guess what the offence was (though we can be pretty certain it was not a first offence) but it is far more likely to involve dealing of various categories, and manufacture. Given the vast extent of Britain’s cannabis farming industry, the figure is in fact startlingly small.

Interestingly the ‘report’ accepts that legalised cannabis would probably be smuggled( see p.33) but describes legalisation, even so, as a ‘great leap forward’.

While aware of the Treaties on the subject (p.38) the report does not seem to grasp that, as a UN Security Council member, the British government cannot simply ignore treaties it has signed and ratified (hence the de facto decriminalisation policy in the first place, I suspect). Nor, since it lacks the federal structure of the USA, can it pretend to be unable to control law changes in federated states, as the US Federal government has done.

It cites of course various other one-sided ‘reports’ similar to itself such as from the ‘Royal Society of Public Health’ or the ‘Police Foundation’ , as evidence on its own side. It makes no mention of billionaires such as George Soros, who have given so much help to the pro-decriminalisation lobby.

But at least it is honest and open (e.g. Chapter 6. The State of the Industry’ ) about the profitability of the Cannabis industry should it achieve legal status, and also about the tax which the West’s bankrupt Treasuries could swiftly squeeze from it. The section on Microsoft is extremely interesting.

I am happy to see it publicised, in itself. I would be glad if plenty of people read it with critical and open minds and then studied its implications, happier still if they were impelled to look at my book offering the opposite case. But I am dismayed by the selective way in which the media (and MPs and Parliamentary Committees) approach this subject, endlessly publicising these efforts but more or less marginalising the other view (which is only produced as an afterthought voice of opposition to the predominant position).

01 May 2016 1:18 AM

I have known and disagreed with Ken Livingstone for nearly 40 years. I especially loathe his slippery excuse-making for the IRA, and I think he has done more damage to this country than almost any other figure on the Left.But it is ridiculous to call him an ‘apologist for Hitler’, or to suggest that he is an anti-Jewish bigot. I was just leaving the BBC’s Westminster studios on Thursday when Mr Livingstone stepped into an over-excited knot of political reporters. They looked like what they are – simultaneously a pack of snapping wolves, buzzing with self-righteousness, and a flock of bleating, conformist sheep, all thinking and saying exactly the same thing. After undergoing a minute or two of synthetic rage and baying, the former Mayor of London politely excused himself and went to the lavatory. The flock waited outside, restored for a moment to calm and reason. Then Ken popped out again and the wild shouting and pushing resumed, as if a switch had been pressed. At one point this stumbling, squawking carnival was joined by a barking dog. If it had gone on much longer, crowds of tourists would have gathered, mistaking it for an ancient London tradition. This is how politics is reported in this country, almost completely without thought.I am, as it happens, a keen Zionist, a confirmed supporter of Israel’s continued existence as an avowedly Jewish state. Anti-Semitism – or Judophobia as I call it – gives me the creeps. So does the extraordinarily selective criticism of Israel, which does many bad things, by people who never seem to notice the equally bad crimes of any other country. I ask them: ‘Why is this?’ They can never answer. And as it happens I had on Wednesday evening taken Mr Livingstone to task (at a London public meeting) for the Left’s feebleness in face of Muslim Judophobia.This is a sad fact. On visits to the Muslim world, from Egypt to Iran, Iraq and Jordan, via the Israeli-occupied West Bank, I have repeatedly met foul and bigoted opinions about Jews which people in this country would be ashamed to speak out loud. I have no doubt that there are plenty of Muslims who do not harbour such views. But there are those who do, and British political parties which seek the support of Muslims have often been coy about challenging this. As for all these people who have suddenly got so exercised about Judophobia, and wildly worked up about Ken Livingstone’s batty views on Zionism (standard issue on the far Left for decades), I have some questions for them.Are you prepared to put the same energy into challenging and denouncing Judophobia among the Palestinians you support abroad, and the British Muslims whose votes you seek here? Because, if not, I might suspect that you are just using the issue to try to win back control of the Labour Party, which you lost last summer in a fair fight.

The crude murder of a gripping story

This country seethes with scandals brought about by excessive political correctness. Yet many police dramas end up reaching for a particular sort of child sexual abuse, in which seemingly respectable conservative people are exposed as corrupt villains, as the root of the mystery they seek to solve. Line Of Duty, the BBC’s latest much praised cop drama, took the same line. It’s a failure of imagination, mixed with Leftish politics. Perhaps that’s why its author also resorted to a ludicrous closing scene, in which a real, tense drama of interrogation, slowly moving towards a stinging conclusion, was abruptly ended by a crude shoot-out and a cruder car chase.

I am not interested in football and do not like it. I am loathed by many in the police because I criticise their aloof arrogance and their lack of interest in our problems. I dislike The Sun newspaper. I think Liverpool is a great and majestic city.So don’t bother accusing me of serving any agenda when I say that I don’t like the unanimous Diana-style hysteria that seems to be developing over the Hillsborough tragedy. It is beyond belief that every police officer present was the devil incarnate. It is beyond belief that every football supporter present was a shining angel.Those accused of criminal wrongdoing in this horrible event must be permitted to defend themselves and their reputations without being attacked for daring to do so. The presumption of innocence, never more important than when an unpopular defendant is on trial, must be enforced. In our free courts nobody is indefensible, and nobody should be denied the liberty to defend himself. Tragedy is no excuse for injustice.

Clegg's drugs confession

Some things are unsayable in British politics. One such is the truth that cannabis has been, for many years, a decriminalised drug. The police, the CPS and the courts have given up any serious effort to arrest and prosecute users, just as evidence starts to pour in that it is extremely dangerous.Instead our elite moan about ‘prohibition’, which does not exist, and the cruel ‘criminalisation’ of dope-smokers, which would be their own fault if it happened, but actually doesn’t. Arrests for this offence are rarer every week, and some police forces openly say they don’t do it any more. Only two years ago, when he was Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg claimed in The Sun newspaper that we were throwing supposedly harmless drug users into prison at the rate of a thousand a year. I’ve never been able to find out where this figure comes from. But on Thursday, he dramatically changed his tune. I extracted from him, on live TV, the most honest thing any senior British politician has actually said on the subject.‘There is sort of de facto decriminalisation of cannabis going on… it’s not a very remarkable discovery. Everyone knows it.‘Of course there is de facto decriminalisation … let’s have a bit of honesty that decriminalisation is happening de facto.’He acted as if he’d been saying this all along. Has anyone else ever heard him do so? The incessant lie that we are waging a failed ‘war on drugs’ with prohibition and persecution only fuels the cynical, greedy campaign for full legalisation. If this succeeds, we will get advertising of drugs, drugs on sale on the internet and in the high street, and untold irreversible misery. Now at least Mr Clegg, of all people, has exposed that lie. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

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Yet another report, this time from the London School of Economics, identifies Synthetic Phonics as an excellent method of teaching children to read. It is by far the best. But many schools still resist it, or dilute it in a ‘mixture of methods’. More than 60 years after Rudolf Flesch explained ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read’ in a famous book, we still refuse to act on the evidence.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down

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30 April 2016 5:11 PM

Having been subjected to the usual grumbles that I ‘didn’t do my case any good’ etc. by standing up for myself against presenters’ attempts to close me down, I thought I’d subject my encounter with Nick Clegg on BBC-2’s ‘Daily Politics to a light-hearted analysis, mainly because it’s interesting and the iplayer means I can. Even so, watching it is a bit of an ordeal, as I hadn’t been taking my ugly pills that day, and on top of that there is often a very good close-up view taken from below, straight up my nostrils, which I would have thought was the last thing anyone would have wanted.

First let’s take a look at the little introductory film (illustrated with copious film of people apparently breaking the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, not to mention jokey puns about ‘weed’ and ‘high’) which set the scene for the discussion. Note, this was largely about cannabis , the decriminalisation of which Nick Clegg supports. This was the general subject I thought I had come to discuss, not the specific and contentious depenalisation of several drugs in Portugal, which the presenter seemed most anxious to discuss with me.

The reporter in the film also says that politicians risk being viewed as ‘off their heads’ if they advocated weakening the law. This isn’t true. Two House of Commons Home Affairs committees have done so, and, if anything, were praised for their supposed courage and far thinking. The Runciman Committee suggested it and were likewise widely praised.

The film says the laws have been relaxed in some places because ‘total prohibition’ ‘doesn’t work’ . Is that so? What ‘total prohibition’ was that? For many years many US states have gone easy on marijuana possession with ‘diversion programmes’ instead of criminal penalties, and/or through the legalisation of supposed ‘medical cannabis’ a transparent excuse for legalising personal possession. Or is it because of well-funded lobbying first for ‘medical marijuana’, prescribed under an extraordinarily lax procedure, and then for decriminalisation?

The reporter is (quite unconsciously) tendentious, using terms such as ‘prohibition’, the language of the legalisers. Their tactic for years has been to claim that the existing laws are oppressive in nature and oppressively enforced, and that this is the cause of the undoubted drug problems in our society. The use of the word ‘prohibition, summoning up vague and inaccurate beliefs about alcohol prohibition in the Al Capone era, is a favourite method.

By using this questionable term, suggesting an iron enforcement of laws against drugs, without qualification or analysis, the film failed to do the job an impartial programme should have done.

For example: ‘Countries like Uruguay have relaxed their laws on cannabis because they say prohibition doesn’t work’.

As far as I can discover, cannabis use in Uruguay was low before the August 2014 declaration that the state would henceforth sell it, and that small-scale private cultivation would be decriminalised. There were 120,000 estimated users in a population of 3.3 million, and 22 tons consumed a year compared to 500 tons a year in California (source LA Times 21/8/2013) before this move was made (a move, incidentally, unpopular among two thirds of Uruguayans if opinion polls are anything to go by) . The New York Times of July 29 2012 notes that ‘personal marijuana use is already decriminalised in Uruguay’, two years before the 2014 change, so it is hard to see what exactly this ‘prohibition’ was that ‘did not work’.

My old opponent Professor David Nutt . whom I once squelched on live radio on the issue of ‘criminalisation’; of users, was then shown saying (in a recorded interview): ‘Where countries have decriminalised the *possession* of drugs we’ve often seen very good health gains and the classic example is Portugal’.

Well, there are varying views of Portugal’s experiment. The claims that the supposed health benefits which followed depenalisation are the *results* of that are strongly disputed. Correlation, as I am often told by legalisers, is not causation. Nor is it, necessarily. Works both ways.

“Much of the most relevant data in this area comes from Portugal, as its reforms were fairly recent, and data from before, during and after implementation is easily available. It is important to note, however, that Portugal made a number of changes to its approach to drugs around the same time as implementing decriminalisation, including widespread implementation of harm-reduction programmes and an increase in investment in drug treatment.It is extremely challenging to disentangle the effects of decriminalisation from the effects of these wider changes.”

Next, a Tory MP, Andrew Griffiths, was shown citing the decriminalisation of cannabis possession in Colorado, and points out that this has been followed by an apparent increase in use by the young. He seems not to know of England’s 40-year experiment in decriminalisation, or to connect our current plight with it, the simple leap from fantasy to reality that I ask all those speaking about this matter to make. He’s also a believer in addiction’. Like so many of my ‘allies’ on this topic, he’s as unaware of reality as the legalisers.

Then the editorial presumption of ‘prohibition’ and of its undesirability appears again, as the reporter asks: ‘Does prohibition make underground drugs far stronger and open a gateway to experimentation with harder drugs?’

The answer to that might well be ‘Eh?’ and ‘what prohibition?’ and ‘No’ and ‘No’, plus a rejection of the term ‘experimentation’, a euphemism for illegal drug abuse (i.e. crime) which is designed to suggest innocent enquiry and a thirst for knowledge. Believe me, these ‘experiments’ do not involve anyone taking notes or measuring the effects accurately against a placebo in a controlled double-blind test. The word is entirely unjustified and its use belittles and in my view condones law-breaking. As I sometimes say, a Corporation which relies on the threat of prosecution backed ultimately by prison to get people to pay its licence fee should surely be very keen on upholding the law.

The reporter then asks : ‘Would decriminalisation or legalisation (they’re not the same thing) mean skunk, spice and other synthetic replacements would disappear?’

To which one might reply, why on earth should it mean that? (as Professor Sir Robin Murray immediately afterwards points out that ready availability of alcohol has not led to everyone drinking weak beer, rather than spirits). There’s no reason I can think of to believe that this might be true. It’s even dafter than asking (as people once did) ‘Would opening pubs all day lead to a continental café culture in British cities?’ self-evidently laughable, and only asked so that the proposition can be advanced. But by posing it as a question, a pro-decriminalisation argument can be insinuated without openly being stated.

It’s true that for balance’s sake Robin Murray was allowed to mock this proposition, but Professor David Nutt was likewise allowed to sympathise with liberalisation. ‘Balanced’ interviewees don’t overcome tendentiousness in the presentation. Readers here will know well that I have long pointed out that it is in presentation and the control of presentation that the real power lies in broadcasting. Merely appearing is nothing like enough.

The reporter also asks, for no apparent reason, the following questions. The first expecting the answer: no; and the second expecting the answer: yes.

‘Do people who are criminalised want to seek help? Does someone with a criminal record for smoking something arguably less dangerous in moderation than alcohol find themselves marginalised?’

These are assertions crammed with unwarranted presuppositions, dressed up as questions.

Again, I regard this as wholly loaded. People who buy and possess illegal drugs are not passively ‘criminalised’ by a cruel despotism. This is a state of laws in which the laws are, by and large, clearly stated and well-known, and not applied retroactively. People who voluntarily break such laws are not ‘criminalised’ by anyone. They actively ‘criminalise’ themselves by consciously and deliberately breaking the known law which in most cases has existed since before they were born. To ‘criminalise’ someone or something you would have to declare something they already did legally to be illegal. Also there’s the ‘arguably less dangerous than alcohol’ claim. It may be ‘arguable’ (the alleged flatness of the Earth is ‘arguable’ if you want to try) but it is not objectively established, nor could it be by any measure known to me, and many people would argue that it was not so, given the growing correlation between cannabis use and mental illness. In any case it is not the reporter’s job to argue it. So why was this redundant passage not struck out by the editor, charged with ensuring impartiality on questions of controversy?

An editor who was truly concerned to be impartial on the subject would in fact have excised all these passages from the script of this pre-recorded item.

Then we begin the actual discussion. Mr Clegg is asked by the presenter, Jo Coburn: ‘Were you very disappointed?’ with the outcome of a UN meeting which rejected attempts to relax international law on drugs.

This is an odd starting point. Who cares about his feelings? Surely we should want to know what exactly he had desired and why he had desired it.

I also noted that his silly claim about ‘Asian countries that want to chop people’s hands off if they touch drugs’ went unchallenged. Do they? Which countries? This isn’t the language of a former Cabinet Minister and Privy Councillor. Ms Coburn also asks Mr Clegg about the UN summit as if liberalisation would have been an achievement. Surely an impartial programme would have accepted that either outcome – Mr Clegg’s reform or its defeat – would have been an achievement. I certainly regard the defeat of the liberalisers as an achievement. Thus an impartial account could not say that nothing had been achieved.

Ms Coburn used these words in her opening question to me : ‘Do you accept that, because there are these polarised positions, as Nick Clegg has just outlined, it’s very difficult then to look at what some people would argue as the sensible view of decriminalising some drugs in order to reduce the number of people who are actually becoming addicted to harder drugs?’

It may be noticeable from my thunderstruck and weary tone of voice that I couldn’t quite believe I had been asked such a question. What was she on about?

What does it matter what I accept? What is this about ‘some people’ and a ‘sensible’ view? In a Wikipedia entry such words would quickly (and rightly) attract a tag saying ‘weasel words’. Who exactly thinks it’s the sensible view? Give names and references. Who doesn’t? *Why do these words even form part of the question?* And what does she mean by ‘polarised’? There’s a difference of opinion on this. She appears to suggest that ‘polarisation’ (which has a faintly pejorative whiff, to me) is a bad thing, preventing us from ‘looking at’ what ‘some people’ would regard as the ‘sensible view’. But we can look at it. We do look at it all the time. What the division of opinion prevents is the *acceptance* not the examination, of the supposedly ‘sensible’ point of view. Why on earth is it ‘difficult’ to look at the pro-decriminalisation view? Most public and broadcast debates on drugs discuss almost nothing else but decriminalisation and its alleged benefits. What are the words ‘what some people would regard as the sensible view of’ even doing in this formulation? Which people? Some wouldn’t regard it as sensible. The fact that some *would* regard it as sensible doesn’t make it so, and an impartial broadcaster has no business choosing between those who would and those who wouldn’t. Why not just ask me what my view was of Mr Clegg’s position?

If she was being (the old excuse ) a ‘devil’s advocate’, I didn’t notice much devilish advocacy directed towards Mr Clegg. It wasn’t put to him (by the impartial BBC) that some people would say that decriminalisation was an irresponsible risk How on earth would decriminalising ‘some drugs’ (presumably cannabis) reduce the number of people taking supposedly ‘harder’ drugs.(she says they’re ‘addicted’, but let’s leave that to one side). It is a mass of ill-informed presuppositions including the contentious ideas that there are ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ illegal drugs, that making drugs easier to buy and possess will reduce the use of drugs, that drug abuse does not involve wilful crime, Why does an impartial BBC presenter use these formulations?

Then Ms Coburn says to me: ‘In your view, Peter Hitchens, there has been a sort of de facto decriminalisation.’. I don’t think she uses the words ‘in your view’ to address or sum up any of Mr Clegg’s statements or assertions. Nor did she say that the statements she made about Portugal were made in anyone’s ‘view’(though in my view they very much were). So why did she need to categorise my points (all of which are objectively checkable documented historical facts, and which Mr Clegg himself went on to concede as accurate) were ‘my view’.

At 36:10 she said, even more amazingly ‘You can argue for decriminalisation and we will cite statistics from countries like Portugal that have actually shown you can then remove the barriers to help addicts’…

This extraordinarily contentious statement was the preface to a question about the links between cannabis and mental illness (which Mr Clegg avoided without interruption or correction by switching the subject to drug-related fatalities)

And then back we went to Portugal, favourite subject of the legalisers,

After Mr Clegg’s amazing admission of de facto decriminalisation (obtained by my questioning of the former Liberal leader) we suddenly turn out to have run out of time (at 39 minutes 29 seconds – the item actually ended nearly two minutes later, most of that time occupied by Mr Clegg).

There, now, wasn’t that fun? And yet some viewers attacked me for daring to be interrupted while I was speaking. So rude of me.

‘ : In an exclusive interview with The Sun, the Deputy PM revealed he wants to end the imprisonment of 1,000 drug users a year who haven't committed any other crime. And he branded the current sentencing rules as "spectacularly self-defeating" and "utterly senseless". Throwing users behind bars only hooks them on harder drugs or turns them into professional criminals, Mr Clegg argued.’

AS I said at the time, this was questionable. ‘Not committed a crime other than possession? Really? Can he find half a dozen people of whom this is true, let alone 1,000? No previous convictions? No suspended sentences? No other offences? Just innocent teenagers who have never even ridden a bike without lights? Really? It's incredibly difficult to get jailed for drug possession. Most cannabis users are let off without even being cautioned.

As for the others, more people (10,682) were cautioned in 2013 for possessing a Class A drug (heroin, cocaine) than were prosecuted (10,049). Of the 9,554 found guilty, just 545 went to prison for an average term of about 16 weeks. Most (6,802) got soppy 'community sentences', suspended sentences, or fines averaging £142.

Another 1,424 were discharged. The story with classes B and C is much the same, except that the fines are even lower and the jail terms even briefer.’

Well, I looked into the question of imprisonment for Cannabis possession.

Here are Ministry of Justice figures for imprisonments for cannabis possession in England and Wales for the years 2005 to 2011.

figures:

Note when you read them that many person arrested for criminal offences, including offences of violence and theft, are carrying cannabis when arrested and are charged with this offence along with others, sometimes many others. As it can be objectively proved and is hard to deny it is a useful holding charge and often survives till the case comes to court. But the figures below do not necessarily mean that *any* of the persons imprisoned were imprisoned solely or even mainly for cannabis possession.

This may have been one of their crimes, but, especially if they were charged with more than two offences, the notional maximum sentence for cannabis possession may well have been greater than the notional maximum for the other offences, and so was listed as the cause of their imprisonment. (This is explained by the following rubric in the statistics: ‘The figures given in the table of court proceedings relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the heaviest penalty imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, , the offence selected is the penalty for which the maximum penalty is the most severe.)

This almost certainly explains the sharp rise in the numbers from 2009, when Cannabis was regraded as ‘Class B’, so theoretically earning a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. Before that date it was graded ‘Class C’ and the maximum was two years. This statistical twiddle may be the only effect of the regrading. Most persons arrested with cannabis are let off, and most of the rest receive minor fines or ‘OCDs', out-of-court disposals not involving punishment. If anyone can find me a single case of a person sent to prison for a first offence of simple cannabis possession since 1990, I will be amazed.

Number sent to prison and average sentences :

Per year

2005 136 4 months

2006 141 2.8 months

2007 162 3.8 months

2008 247 2 months

2009 320 2.1 months .

2010 346 1.9 months

2011 411 1.9 months

Note the very short sentences, which even so are misleadingly long. All such sentences are automatically halved, and very possibly even the half sentence is not served in full, so frantic are the authorities to keep the prisons from bursting.

The great majority who actually came before the courts (a diminishing proportion) were fined, many conditionally discharged, third biggest community sentences.

Arrests for cannabis possession fell by almost half between 2010 and 2015

The number of cannabis users arrested by the police has fallen by almost half in the last five years. Police in England and Wales recorded 19,115 arrests for cannabis possession in 2015, compared with a high of 35,367 in 2010 - a fall of 46 per cent.

Police chiefs in four forces last year signalled that cannabis users and growers were no longer a priority, and Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs' Council, admitted forces had given up investigating small-scale cannabis farms. Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: 'This is a huge drop in the number of prosecutions for cultivation. It seems either the police or the Crown Prosecution Service have decided that this is not a priority.

Meanwhile, (reports the Bristol Post) the Avon and Somerset police force's stance on cannabis has emerged following comments by Lib Dem mayoral candidate Kay Barnard who says she would like to see a "more relaxed approach" by the police towards cannabis if she was elected as Bristol's next mayor.

Dr Barnard wants to foster a "more joined up approach" towards the housing crisis, tackling homelessness and helping the most vulnerable people in the city.

To this end, she wants to "encourage a 'relaxed approach' to the policing of cannabis-related offences".

In response, the police have re-issued a statement which says they have never targeted the personal use of cannabis "unless that use is in itself creating a more harmful situation and endangering vulnerable people (i.e. the smoking of cannabis around children or close to educational premises)."

It goes on: "We do receive information from the public about suspected cannabis cultivation sites on a daily basis, so the growing of cannabis is clearly a concern for many within our communities. As the public would expect that intelligence is researched and when appropriate, a warrant is applied for and executed.

"We do however target organised groups who are responsible for the supply and production of cannabis on a commercial scale and some of the tactics used by these groups can involve small grow sites consistent with 'personal use'.

Although the police have confirmed they do not target the personal use of cannabis, it does not mean that people are never arrested or charged for possessing the drug.

However, the number of arrests for possession fell dramatically last year compared with the previous five years.

There were 776 arrests in 2015 compared with 1,128 in 2014, 1,544 in 2013 and 1,939 in 2012.

The number of people charged with possession has also fallen.

Last year, the total was 361 which compares with 508 in 2014, 730 in 2013 and 881 in 2012.'

11 October 2015 1:43 AM

The really big political changes in this country take place inside the major parties, not at general elections. Think of the Heseltine putsch against Mrs Thatcher, or the cruel overthrow of Iain Duncan Smith, or the recent desperate recapture of the Labour Party (whatever next?) by socialists.

And last week the Tory Party finally transformed itself into New Labour.

There are a few finishing touches to be added between now and 2020. But after much writhing and struggling, the chrysalis finally burst open to reveal the Heir to Blairism, glistening with snake oil and hair oil and surrounded by trilling choirs of happy billionaires, just as in the old days of Lord Cashpoint and bombing Iraq.

The process will only be complete when Lord Mandelson himself accepts that his life’s work is now being done by David Cameron and George Osborne, who is even starting to look like the Blair era’s Sinister Minister. Perhaps it’s time for a moustache.

The Tories also yearn for the open endorsement of Alan Milburn, whom they already employ as Commissar for Equality.

For the moment, they will have to content themselves with the embrace of Lord Adonis, more Blairite than Blair, who is in charge of concreting over what remains of the English countryside, a long-term New Labour obsession.

Privately, they are on good terms with the Blair creature himself, whose advice is always welcome in Downing Street. He is known there as ‘The Master’ and, with a few very minor changes (mainly the replacement of the word ‘Conservative’ with ‘New Labour’), he could have delivered the Prime Minister’s Manchester speech on Wednesday.

Who said (I have removed any mention of the party name): ‘It wasn’t just me who put social justice, equality for gay people, tackling climate change, and helping the world’s poorest at the centre of our mission – we all did’?

Honestly, could you tell? Where now are all those who thought David Cameron would unleash his inner Tory when freed from the embrace of Nick Clegg? Mr Cameron doesn’t have an inner Tory, and Wednesday’s performance suggests that Mr Clegg is actually the more conservative of the two.

Even the slightly embarrassing off-colour joke about sex, astonishing in the mouth of a serious politician, was the sort of thing that Mr Blair likes to do, along with the mention of ‘the kids’, the tinny business-school English, and the use of terrorism as an excuse for dubious actions.

Though I doubt whether Mr Blair would have had the nerve to make the deeply dishonest misrepresentation of Jeremy Corbyn’s perfectly reasonable and civilised objections to the extrajudicial killing of Osama Bin Laden.

The false and cheap suggestion that Mr Corbyn does not regard the events of September 11, 2001 as a tragedy – when he specifically said that he did – was a disgrace for which Mr Cameron should quickly make amends.

This is the thing that is most wrong with Blairism – its instinct is to lie. It is at bottom a nasty mix of greed, Leninist party discipline, advertising slickness and ruthless, intolerant political correctness. It attracts and promotes power-worshippers.

To survive and prosper, it must always pretend to be something else.

And as long as it succeeds in doing so, we are stuck with it.

Finally, a movie that's right to use the awful F-word

I don't generally approve of the F-word, but I must admit that the opening scene of the new film The Martian, about a US astronaut stranded on the red planet, provides a rare example of the wholly justified use of this powerful expletive.

Even I might be tempted to mutter it, under the circumstances. There are many interesting things about this drama, one of them being that we never see the marooned spaceman’s family, whose powerless pain would normally feature largely in such a story.

But perhaps the most fascinating of all is its oozy, flattering attitude towards China, shown as a noble ally and as a highly advanced country, with no attention paid to its repressive, nasty features.

It’s all rather different to the way the equally despotic Soviet Union used to be dealt with in the movies, when it was America’s chief rival.

For those who think that Jeremy Corbyn is a threat to national security, how about this fellow, who appeared before the Labour conference in military uniform, denouncing the upper classes of every nation as ‘selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent’, and promising they would be dealt with shortly by the coming ‘socialist revolution’ (by which he meant the arrival of Russian tanks).

It was the 1945 Labour conference. And it was Denis Healey, who died last weekend, full of years and honour, having been one of the best Defence Secretaries in modern times, and a reasonably competent Chancellor. Healey was in fact a terrible old Stalinist, an actual member of the Communist Party in the worst gulag days, who may just possibly have stayed sympathetic to Moscow for rather longer than he later admitted.

Yet when it came to it, he showed undoubted courage on the field of battle in his country’s service, and later proved a wise and competent Minister, ending his life fiercely opposed to the succession of stupid wars into which lesser men dragged us.

Proper countries are full of awkward, discontented people who may in fact turn out to be better patriots than the more obvious and noisy flag-wavers. Bear it in mind.

Is there a worse thing than having your child wrongfully snatched away from you by the State, which cannot be bothered to wait to see if charges against you are proven? Are we truly free if such a thing can be done, irrevocably?

The case of Karrissa Cox and Richard Carter is a grotesque injustice. No court should have been able to hand over their child for adoption until the charges of abuse against them had been heard and proved beyond reasonable doubt. In fact, the charges collapsed.

The presumption of innocence is all that stands between us and tyranny, and I hope that some wise judge acts swiftly to restore the lost child to its parents. This isn’t a free country if this doesn’t happen.

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15 January 2015 1:56 PM

Let’s hope David Cameron sticks to his daft insistence that he won’t take part in a TV election debate unless the Greens are there too. I’m always amused by the claims of toadying commentators that Mr Cameron has a sure touch, a brilliant mind, etc. etc. There is no evidence that this is so, and never has been. He has played a bad hand badly, and if it were not for his only real skill –public relations – and the willingness of so many in the media to be gulled by him, he would long ago have been pushed to the side of the road and left there to rust.

He is almost singlehandedly responsible for the transformation of UKIP from marginal Dad’s Army to semi-mainstream Dad’s Army. He is close to a genius at picking fights with his own constituency which do not (as planned ) gain him support among BBC types and Guardian readers, but which do severely alienate former Tory voters and members. He seems mesmerised by a desire to gain and keep the support of the Murdoch Press, which will (as it always has done) toady to him while he is in office, and drop him as soon as it is sure he is a loser.

Now he has misjudged the TV debates issue. Even I, a person who is interested in politics and needs to know what is going on, strive to stop my mind wandering (nay, not just wandering but happily packing a picnic and setting off on a long hike, perhaps stopping for a while at a picturesque pub or tearoom) during these events.

They are by their nature very boring, as there really isn’t very much left to say on any of the subjects that come up. Worse, there isn’t a major politician in England who can put on a compelling personal performance that you would want to watch for its own sake.

This isn’t true of Alex Salmond, who is at least interesting to watch, or of George Galloway, perhaps the last proper political orator at large in Britain. But both are Scottish, and neither is in the mainstream of English politics. Some people go on about Al ’Boris’ Johnson, but can I be the only one who finds the performance (for such it is) wears a little thin after the first four or five times? Whenever he does admit to having thought about something, the results are generally banal and conventional.

Properly handled, and with close attention paid to the maxim ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit News’, these events will have no effect at all on the outcome of the election. Messrs Cameron, Miliband and Clegg all have teams of helpers who can realistically rehearse the likely clashes, and give them a pretty good idea of the traps that they might tumble into. It is out of these rehearsals that those ‘spontaneous’ , snappy one-liners emerge.

Mr Cameron may have a bit to fear from Nigel Farage, but not all that much. Mr Farage has already gained all he is going to gain this side of 2015, and perhaps as much as he ever will, depending on what happens next. Because he is his party’s only asset and because he has no long-term tribal vote on which to fall back, he has the most to lose from a bungled encounter. He could actually lose the war for UKIP in an evening .

Like a theoretically powerful fleet-in-being whose implied menace keeps its foes at bay, he is probably better off staying in port and keeping his reputation for power intact, rather than risking all on the High Seas, when one lucky shot could send him gurgling to the bottom.

Besides which, having had one lot of leader’s debates (even if they didn’t actually enjoy them much, or learn much from them) the British viewing public now regard them as a sort of Human Right. To deny them this benefit is to look crabby and shifty and dishonest.

But how does Mr Cameron get himself out of his fix, unless he climbs down and makes his previous stance look silly? It is difficult, but not impossible. He’s climbed down lots of times before. But this time it will depend to some extent on how willing the others are to help him. Mr Farage, who I suspect thinks he will do very well , even though he probably won’t, is likely to be the keenest on a deal. Mr Clegg, who knows nothing can save him anyway, less so; Mr Miliband, who just isn’t telegenic, is probably offering humanist prayers to the forces of history (or whoever humanists pray to, when they want a parking space or a promotion) that Mr Cameron carries on refusing, and the TV companies decide not to go ahead, with an empty podium where the premier ought to be.

If they do decide on the empty podium, may I suggest a large vat of hair-gel, where Mr Cameron would otherwise be standing, or a demijohn of snake-oil, if they can get hold of it at short notice?

10 August 2014 12:25 AM

A good friend of mine has vanished into an Iranian prison. I am writing this in the hope that it will help to free him.

Some of you may recall a report I wrote in this newspaper in 2007, about what Iran is really like, about its people’s great friendliness towards us, about the astonishing amount of freedom of thought and speech that exists there despite the forbidding regime.

What an irony it is that I could not have begun to write this without the help of Jason Rezaian, an Iranian citizen with an American mother and a Persian father. For it is he who is now in a cell somewhere in Tehran.

Jason showed me the real Iran, took me inside homes and families, introduced me to normal, wise people of all opinions.

He plainly loves his father’s country, its ancient and lovely culture and faith. I doubt if any single journey has ever educated, informed and delighted me as much as that one did, which is saying something.

Jason’s pride in Iran’s history and beauty was unmistakable. Ever since then, I have done what I could to correct the silly prejudices which far too many Westerners have towards that fascinating country.

Jason went on to become the Washington Post’s correspondent in Tehran. He married an Iranian, Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist.

He continued to work on explaining Iran to the outside world with intelligence and knowledge, worth more than any number of ambassadors. And then, on July 22, plainclothes police pushed into his Tehran flat and took both of them away. Nobody has heard from them since, except for a brief phone call from his wife to her parents.

Jason is a transparently good man, working openly in the clear air of day (and I might add a very good companion), who loves his country and seeks only to tell the truth about it, where it will do most good.

I fear he has been caught up in some Persian intrigue, part of the endless contest between Iran’s political leadership and its deep state.

Whatever the reason, he and his wife should be released. I hope very much they will be soon.

If any of my readers wish to join me in this plea, they might wish to write and say so, politely and courteously, to His Excellency Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, c/o Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 16 Prince’s Gate, London SW7 1PT.

A kind reader points out that you could also try e-mailing iranemb.lon@mfa.gov.ir

Theatre is no place to play politics

Why do London Lefties get so excited about David Hare’s 1995 play Skylight, which sold out within seconds of being revived in one of the capital’s theatres.

I will tell you. It is because of a silly Leftist speech (which in my view rather spoils a good drama) shouted at a businessman – played by Bill Nighy – by a self-righteous teacher (Carey Mulligan).

It takes the Lefties back to the dear dead days when they still believed New Labour would save the country. Ha ha.

'Safe' cannabis doesn't exist, Mr Clegg

The Sun newspaper, which has in the past been a keen cheerleader and bootlicker for the Blair creature, the Iraq and Afghan Wars and for David Cameron, now wants a ‘rethink’ on drug laws. Well, you can’t rethink till you’ve thought in the first place.

Its pretext for this irresponsible tripe is an interview with Nick Clegg, in which he claims we’re too tough on drug possession. The courts, he drivels, are ‘imprisoning 1,000 users a year who have not committed a crime other than possession’.

Not committed a crime other than possession? Really? Can he find half a dozen people of whom this is true, let alone 1,000? No previous convictions? No suspended sentences? No other offences? Just innocent teenagers who have never even ridden a bike without lights?

Really?

It’s incredibly difficult to get jailed for drug possession. Most cannabis users are let off without even being cautioned.

As for the others, more people (10,682) were cautioned in 2013 for possessing a Class A drug (heroin, cocaine) than were prosecuted (10,049). Of the 9,554 found guilty, just 545 went to prison for an average term of about 16 weeks. Most (6,802) got soppy ‘community sentences’, suspended sentences, or fines averaging £142. Another 1,424 were discharged. The story with classes B and C is much the same, except that the fines are even lower and the jail terms even briefer.

The idea that this regime is too tough, and needs to be softened, could only find a home in the head of someone as dim as Nick Clegg. I do hope that next May the voters of Sheffieldwill chuck him out of Parliament.

They may remember that their fellow citizen Alan Greaves, a kindly church organist, was beaten to death on his way home from church there at Christmas 2012, by two young men who laughed as they ran from his bleeding body, and were later found to be cannabis smokers. Soft, safe, nice cannabis, eh?

Mr Clegg wants to make it even easier to get. Let’s put him back on the streets, where he can meet the people who smoke it.

*********

No, let’s not intervene again in Iraq. This isn’t because I don’t grieve for the people now facing the horrors of Islamic State rule. It’s because intervention won’t save them.

If there is one thing we should have learned from our intervening in the past 35 years, it is that it almost always makes things much, much worse than they would otherwise have been.

**********

Since we’ve largely given up punishing criminals, our jails are warehouses and fines go unpaid for years, have the authorities considered the Bernie Ecclestone solution?

Mr Ecclestone, accused but certainly not convicted of bribing a banker, was able to get the trial abandoned by paying a large wad of cash to the German government.

Presumably he actually had to show the colour of his money before the deal was done. So how about applying the same rule here. On arrest, you can simply buy your way out of the charges.

Of course, lots of guilty people will get away without being punished, but they do already, so it’s no more cynical than the existing arrangement, and at least it would help pay off George Osborne’s enormous, swelling deficit.

And there’d no longer be any reason to pretend that crime was going down, since more crime would mean more revenue.

********

Boris Johnson is standing for Parliament because he knows that the Tories can’t win the general election. He hates the Commons and did badly there last time. But if he isn’t an MP he can’t stand for the leadership which a beaten David Cameron will have vacated. Simple.

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07 August 2014 5:06 PM

What follows is an extended response to a timely and justified criticism from Mr Wylie in the ‘Boris Johnson’ thread.

Mr Wylie asked :

‘Recently Mr Hitchens commented on the courage of one of his readers for his willingness to rethink his stance on addiction. Can I ask Mr Hitchens when he will have the courage to admit that he was wrong on his predicted split of the Coalition Government, by the Spring of 2014, through some sort of manufactured row between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, and that Vince Cable would take over from Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats, following Nick Clegg’s appointment as a European Commissioner. These were views that Mr Hitchens expressed in his blog on 25th November 2011, 4th March 2012, 15th July 2012, and then on 17th May 2013, bafflingly under the headline ‘MYSTIC HITCHENS IS RIGHT AGAIN’, even though the events he had forecast had not actually happened yet. Come on Mr Hitchens, show your courage and admit that you got this one wrong.

I replied ( as soon as I saw his comment in the queue): ‘Mr Wylie asks :' Can I ask Mr Hitchens when he will have the courage to admit that he was wrong on his predicted split of the Coalition Government, by the Spring of 2014, through some sort of manufactured row between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, and that Vince Cable would take over from Nick Clegg as leader of the Liberal Democrats, following Nick Clegg’s appointment as a European Commissioner. ' Mr Wylie is quite right , and he has pricked my conscience. I have been meaning to address this for some time, and will do so (with full admission of error) in a proper post soon. But yes, I was wrong.'

I repeat, my prediction was wrong.

I won’t offer any defence, as such, simply say that in my view the Coalition Parties would have been more sensible if they had done what I predicted. I am sure such an arrangement was considered. Could it be that it didn’t happen because a planned putsch against Nick Clegg failed? The whole affair certainly had the look of a botched coup to me.

What they have done instead is an elaborate distancing act, in which Mr Cameron and his colleagues attempt to give the impression that they have woken from a long liberal sleep and become conservatives ‘initiatives’ about welfare. Immigration, crime, the EU etc) , and the Liberal Democrats are increasingly publicly critical of those areas of coalition policy with which they disagree.

My only puzzle is why Mr Clegg wants to stay in Coalition to the bitter end, and why his MPs are ready to let him do so. Maybe they just decided that nothing could save them.

The Tories, as was plain from the appalling spin they successfully foisted on their media toadies after the Euro-elections, genuinely believe their own propaganda, that they can win outright, that Labour were the main losers in May (statistically this is blatantly untrue) and have pinned almost everything on the so-called (buy them) ‘Kill Mill’ strategy.

This aims to mock and diminish Ed Miliband to such an extent that he becomes as much of a liability as Gordon Brown was (after a similarly disreputable campaign of personal vilification) in the last election. It had not occurred to me when I made my prediction that British politics had now sunk to such a puerile level. I apologize for failing to realise the depths to which the Tory machine would sink, and the willingness of the media circus to go along with this.

Mind you, I should have realised that. After all, if there’s no earthly reason to vote Tory, the only thing you can do is to smear the other side.

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06 April 2014 1:30 AM

I told you that David Cameron was a continuation of Blairism by other means. Along with all his other mimicry of the Blair creature, his most striking policy is his determination to continue New Labour’s revolutionary plan to destroy the married family, drive women out of their homes into wage-slavery and abolish the whole concept of the father and husband.

This scheme is always disguised as something else. It always means more State meddling in family life. Usually it is called ‘Equality’. But sometimes it is called ‘Children’s Rights’.

Both these expressions are lies. Women are not more equal, but far worse off thanks to the anti-marriage revolution, as they are increasingly finding.

They must work inside and outside the home, spend endless hours driving from home to day-orphanage to work to hypermarket, and then back again, and see less and less of their children

As for children, their supposed ‘rights’ actually mean ever-increasing power for the State to intervene in their lives. Oddly enough, this never seems to diminish or prevent horrible abuse.

The emotional reaction to the ghastly death of Maria Colwell – a little girl beaten and starved by her stepfather – in 1973 led to the vast increase in State power over the family in the Children Act of 1989.

Yet in 2000 we saw the very similar case of Victoria Climbie, pictured below, and in 2007 that of Peter Connelly (Baby P). There will, I fear, be another such horror before long.

Most of these cases have two effects: calls for ‘something to be done’, and personal attacks on the social workers involved. Both reactions are stupid.

The State is no good at childcare, and nothing will ever make it any good at it. Power and bureaucracy cannot create an ounce of love.

The State’s own care homes are notorious scenes of abuse and chaos, from which many children emerge with their lives already ruined, destined for prison or mental hospital.

We need to accept that we simply cannot make society perfect by passing laws, that people who choose to be evil are skilled at concealing their crimes and scaring away social workers and even the police.

It is time MPs realised that these crimes will happen again, whatever they do.

These schemes sold as safeguards for children are in fact power grabs by the State. Yet we are now told that the Queen’s Speech will contain proposals for a ‘Cinderella Law’ under which parents can be imprisoned for ‘emotional cruelty’.

The chief booster of this Bill is a supposedly Conservative MP called Robert Buckland. When I discussed his plan with him on Radio 2 on Monday, I was amazed at his naivety. As a lawyer and part-time judge, he really should know that vague, subjective laws are the tools of tyrants.

Under such legislation, nobody can ever be sure if he is breaking the law or not. No jury could ever be sure who was telling the truth. But the resulting inquisitions into families – the well-publicised dawn raids, the search and seizure of private possessions, the smears in court that will never wash out – will ruin the lives of any who are arrested, even if they are eventually acquitted. In the old communist countries, the regimes also encouraged denunciations by children, who usually had little idea what would follow.

In Soviet cities, until 1991, there were statues of a little monster called Pavlik Morozov, who turned his own parents in to the secret police for hoarding grain. Schoolchildren would be marched to these shrines of evil and told to revere his memory.

And yet the ‘Conservative’ Party is proposing to write childish denunciation of parents into the law of the land this summer, and the poor Queen will have to recommend this ghastly measure to MPs in her speech in June.

When the Tories said ‘New Labour – New Danger’ back in 1997, they did not know how right they were.

Nor did they, or we, know they would be part of the danger.

Playing a dangerous Game

I am worried by the TV popularity of George R.R. Martin’s clever fantasy Game Of Thrones.

Mr Martin’s imaginary world is frighteningly cruel. The society it describes is far worse than the Middle Ages, because its characters are entirely unrestrained by Christian belief. There’s a lifeless, despised religion but nobody takes it seriously.

I fear it will make those who watch it worse people than they were before.

» I often wish I possessed superpowers, which might allow me to help the people who write to me to recount the horrible things that can so easily happen to you at the hands of authority in modern Britain.

Well, I don’t. But perhaps I am developing them. I was crossing the road on foot at a pelican crossing, protected by a red light, when I saw a cyclist, kitted out for the Tour de France, approaching at speed and plainly not planning to stop. I glared at him from a range of about 20 feet. To my amazement, he immediately toppled over on to his side, hitting the road amid the crunch and tinkle of damaged accessories. I was laughing so much, I had to turn away.

By the time I was able to look back, he was up and moving again, fast enough to catch up with me and call me a rude name. I replied that I hadn’t actually done anything to him and that, while he might be right about how horrible I am, people who ride through pedestrian crossings are even worse. Evildoers beware. I might be nearby.

Nigel the peacemaker

Interesting that Nigel Farage, pictured right, easily won the EU debate against Nick Clegg, despite several attempts to smear him.

I’m familiar with most of these smears, especially the ‘living in the past’ one, always used by people who have run out of arguments.

But in many ways the most interesting thing was that Mr Farage’s opposition to foreign wars didn’t cost him any support, and may have gained him some.

What a good thing that patriotism is no longer linked with mindless support for the drums of war.

It’s the liberals who do that now.

» Why is David Cameron standing by Maria Miller, the pathetic, over-promoted Minister censured for her expenses? Some say it’s because he hasn’t enough women in his Cabinet (enough for what?).

But I think it’s because the Premier is still guilty about his own entirely legal claims for Elite Housing Benefit. Most people still don’t realise how greedily this already rich man milked the system.

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28 March 2014 9:39 AM

I notice that the Deputy Prime Minister is attacking Nigel Farage for daring to differ from the consensus view of the Ukraine crisis, as he did at the very end of their debate. Is this proper behaviour for a minister in the government of a free country, let alone for the leader of a party which styles itself both 'Liberal' and 'Democratic' ?

He does not offer any counter to what Mr Farage says, simply attacking him for having said it, claiming to be 'astounded' by the expression of a dissenting view, using the words 'perverse' and 'extreme' and of course suggesting that Mr Farage is therefore a supporter of Vladimir Putin.

I should have thought that in the long tradition of foreign policy debate in this country, tough as it has often been, opposing views have generally been allowed. Mr Clegg's own party was fiercely in favour of punishing Turkey for the Bulgarian atrocities, in a huge foreign policy controversy of the 19th century, and several of its prominent members were very much against our participation in the Boer War. These views were not universally accepted, but they were not condemned as illegitimate, I think, or treated as if they should never have been expressed.

In modern times, his predecessor as Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, took an admirably principled and correct stand against the Iraq war, against a tide of Murdoch-inspired flagwaving and war hysteria, not to mention government lying.

I think the behaviour of the British media, with their uncritical acceptance of the 'Ukraine Good, Russia Bad' oversimplification, has much to do with this. Far too many ill-informed reporters, who have never heard of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, were at nursery school during the Cold War and until a few weeks ago couldn't have pronounced Simferopol or found the Crimea on a map (many still can't) , have been lecturing the British public about Russian inquity and Ukrainian heroism.

But the Deputy Prime Minister, who derives his office from a free parliament with a legal opposition, has a duty to rise above this flood of drivel.

If he disagrees with Mr Farage, let him say why. Did the EU not intervene aggressively in Ukraine, knowing perfectly well that its intervention was unwelcome to Russia, and that Ukraine itself was strongly divided on the issue? Did the EU not know of the existence of parties and factions such as Pravy Sektor or Svoboda, not famous for their tolerance? When Ukraine's legitimate government rejected its association agreement, did the EU accept the position and gracefully withdraw? Not exactly.

Did its High Representative for Foreign Affairs not mingle with the anti-government mob, abandonding diplomatic discretion? She did. Have EU leaders not raised false hopes that in some way EU association will raise Ukraine's standard of living (in the short term, it would almost certainly lower it, by destroying protected industries and agriculture, and the long-term is hard to see, given what has happened to other exonomic basket-cases which have been hurriedly included in the EU. Why, even the supposed 'success story' Poland has had to send hundreds of thousands of young men and women abroad to find work). And what about the deal under which President Yanukovich was supposed to remain in office for his elected term, a deal which collapsed almost as soon as it was made, a deal in which EU foreign ministers were involved as sponsors? Who broke it?

Why is it either perverse or extreme to criticise this reckless diplomatic conduct? Many have died following these events, and some would say they died because of them. Some controversies may have only one side. This is not one of them, and Mr Clegg should not act or speak as if it were.